INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF ETHICS
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY AND NEED OF ETHICS
Dr TAMANNA KHOSLA
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR, IAE
“In this incisive article, Dr Tamanna Khosla exposed the pharma industry. One wonders how the noblest of professions has lost to craze for bucks” – Editor
It is clear that pharmaceutical industry is not by any stretch of imagination doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care
Paul Farmer
The term Big Pharma is used to refer collectively to the global pharmaceutical industry. According to Steve Novella the term has come to connote a demonized form of the pharmaceutical industry. Professor of writing Robert Blaskiewicz has written that conspiracy theorists use the term Big Pharma as “shorthand for an abstract entity comprising corporations, regulators, NGOs, politicians, and often physicians, all with a finger in the trillion-dollar prescription pharmaceutical pie”.
Newspaper articles were published suggesting that large pharmaceutical companies are operating as mafia organizations.
“The characteristics of organized crime and racketeering, include extortion, fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice, obstruction of law enforcement, tampering with witnesses, and political corruption. Lots of people have been killed by the pharmaceutical industry .Prescription drugs can kill far more than illegal drugs, or any war. There are many areas in which corruption can take hold, and one of the most dangerous forms of corruption is what is happening in the pharmaceutical industry .Corruption in the pharmaceutical industry is incredibly serious, because doctors rely on published studies as a recommendation for treatment. A large number of patients can be hurt if these studies are fraudulent. Here is an example of how corruption in this area can be fatal. Also I would like to mention a painkiller Vioxx. There were many indications that this drug would be dangerous, but misinformation was published in the medical literature in order to promote Vioxx. Therefore, that drug was approved and marketed. After four years, due to frequent and serious side effects, the drug was withdrawn from the market. Drug for diabetes Avandia is another example. Between 1999 and 2007 it is estimated it caused more than 80,000 cases of heart attacks. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the manufacturer of Avandia, hid the real information on the medicine for more than 10 years, because they knew that the correct information would badly affect their sales.
HIV/AIDS
In a 2006 column for Harper’s Magazine, journalist Celia Farber claimed that the antiretroviral drug nevirapine was part of a conspiracy by the “scientific-medical complex” to spread toxicity. Psycho-pharmaceuticals are less effective in the long run than talk therapy. Talk therapy, like drugs, does change brain and body chemistry; unlike drugs, though, talk therapy has no side-effects. Instead, talk therapy gives a patient tools that usually help to solve future problems.
Hidden cancer cure
The idea that big pharma has a cure for cancer and is suppressing it so that they can maintain a profit is believed by as much as 27% of the American public according to a 2005 survey.[7] The argument is that pharmaceutical companies are slowing down research for a comprehensive cure for cancer by developing high-profit, single-purpose treatments rather than focusing on a supposed cure-all for all cancers; however, the idea that holding back a cure would result in more profit than presenting one is not considered a very strong argument. This manifestation also largely ignores the fact that cancer is not a single disease but instead many and that large strides have been made in the fight against it.
In 2016 David Robert Grimes published a research paper that if there was an actual big pharma conspiracy to conceal a cure for cancer, it would take about 3.2 years for it to get exposed due to the sheer number of people required to keep it secret.
CONCLUSION
I guess we need to understand that it shouldn’t have taken so much time to develop drugs against certain diseases if Homeopathy, Yoga Reiki and other alternative therapies were used. For example talk therapy does more help than drug therapy which latest research shows. This mafia has to go who earn in trillions. People need to raise their voice against these companies. Innocent lives have to be saved from the clutches of this dangerous mafia of pharmaceutical, industry, doctors and lobbies. Infact there have been cases where people have been falsely declared for example having depression or even diseases like cancer. Awareness is the only key fight this mafia.
Author:
Dr Tamanna Khosla is a Ph.D from New Delhi and political philosopher and feminist by profession. She has taught in tcDU for several years at bachelor’s and master’s level. She is a Distinguished Scholar with International Academy of Ethics
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